CAPE WORKERS IN GERMAN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA, 1904-1912 PAmSOF MIGRANCY AND THE CLOSING OF OPTIONS ON TEE SOUTHERN ABRICAN LABOUR MAlWZP William Beinart Between 1904 and 1912, a considerable number of African .men from the Cape Colony migrated to work in German South-West Africa (SWA) . During this time, there were always a few thousand Cape workers in "Jamani"; in peak years the number probably reached around 10,000 - as many as worked in the biggest Cape ports. They played an important role as transporters and labourers in the German colonial wars against the Herero and Nama (1904-1907). They were also responsible for building much of the railway network that spread out from the ports of Swakopmund and Luderitz. Although their presence has hardly been noted by historians, their experiences are well documented. Cape officials, who felt some responsibility for their nationals in a foreign country, took note of their complaints. The Cape Native Affairs Depmtment (NU) also handled claims to the wages of deceased workers. In the correspondence over such questions, there are some remarkable statements by migrant workers. It was these, not always the easiest type of material to locate, that initially provided the stimulus for this paper. Yet, it is not merely to revive a forgotten episode in labour history that this topic is being addressed. The movement of Cape workers to SWA and the eventual curtailment of this pattern of migrancy illuminates important features of the changing political economy of the subcontinent at the time. The episode also serves to under- line the point that the subcontinental labour market was increasingly being integrated around the hub of the Rand mines, a process which had implications for patterns of migrancy throughout the area. Moreover, the material opens the way to an analysis of options facing workers and provides a rare though limited glimpse of workers' own perceptions of their position. Studies of the proletarianization of mal communities in southern Africa have tended to concentrate on the way in which such communities became increasingly dependent on income from wage labour without totally losing their access to rural resources. But an understanding of the complex processes of proletarianization also requires an examination of persistence and change in patterns of migrancy, the way in which these affected already semi-proletarianized communities and the consciousness of migrants. Some attempt is made to explore these issues in the paper. Recruitment for Geman SWA and the Early Experience of Mimants A majority, though by no means all, of the workers migrating to SWA came from the Ciskeian and southern Transkeian districts of the Eastern Cape. (1) This was an area in which the experience of colonization was highly diverse, where complex patterns of peasantiza.tion and proletarianization had been taking place over the whole of the nineteenth century. Two brief points of relevance to the story of migration to SWA should be made. Firstly, in comparison with the rest of the Transkeian Territories, where the bulk of the African population of the Colony was settled, these Ciskeian and southern Transkeian areas were more thoroughly colonized. Relationships were more highly commoditized, Christianity, literacy and education more widespread, and migrancy had been well entrenched for a longer period. Secondly, the feature of patterns of migrancy from these districts since the 1870s had been avoidance of fa,rms and mines. (2) Eastern Cape workers moved into employment in the ports and on the railways. Even if wages were not consistently higher in these sectors, migrants were able to maintain greater control over their life at work and bargain more effectively. (3) Especially on the railways, points of production were sufficiently dispersed to make centralized control by employers difficult. (4) Patterns of migrancy were appropriate to workers who were amongst the first on the labour market, were conscious of the alternatives available and the possibility for organization, and whose rights as Cape citizens gave them some freedom to seek the most attractive employment. Immediately before the South African war (1899-1902) there had been some movement to the Rand mines by Eastern Cape workers. However, the mines closed down during the war and demand for workers in the ports, which had to service large military forces, spiralled upwards. Especially in Cape Town itself, where employers had only started to use migrants on a large scale in the previous decade, wage levels soared. (5) Wage levels declined slightly after the War, as employers in Cape Town took concerted measures to drive down the costs of labour. A segregated location for Africans in the city was established in 1901. (6) But Cape Town still remained one of the most favoured centres for workers from all over the Colony. Between June 1903 and June 1904, nearly 10,000 workers from Transkeian districts alone received passes to work in Cape Town. (7) Ciskeian pass figures are not available but the number may have been comparable. These migrants found their hopes for high wages dashed. For by the end of 1903 the Colony, as a whole, and particularly Cape Town, was plunged into depression. (8) In essence, it was a commercial depression caused by the removal of troops, fall off in imports and redirection of Transvaal traffic to Delagoa Bay and Durban. For a city so dependent on its docks and carrying trade, the effect was immediate. And colonial government revenues, drawn largely from customs and railway tariffs, declined sharply. During the early part of 1904, many African workers in Cape Town, their ranks swollen by the large numbers arriving from the rural districts, found themselves without work. One of the few bright spots on Cape Town's horizon during the following few years was German South-West Africa. As a journalist noted in 1910: German South West Africa has been an excellent customer to the Cape Colony, more especially to the West, and statistics show that an enormous amount of trade has been done in recent years with that territory. It is common knowledge that Cape Town, if it had not been for German South West Africa, would have been in a very bad financial position for a long while past. (g) SWA was also to be the escape route for those Cape workers who were reluctant to flollow the logic of their position and go underground in the Transvaal mines. The option opened to them as a result of a specific episode in the violent history of German colonization in that territory which was as unfortunate for its victims as it seemed fortunate for workless migrants in Cape Town. Prior to the turn of the century, settler economic activity in South-West Africa was largely limited to trade and dispersed pastoralism. (10) Minerals had not yet been exploited; public works programmes and railway development were in their infancy. In 1903, the German authorities had actually agreed to allow recruiting by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association in the territory; a little over 1,000 workers left for mines. (11) But by 1904 the German ColonyrS needs had been dramatically transformed and the agreement was not renewed. The Herero and Nama chiefdoms of the'interior rose in a series of rebellions which took the Germans three years to control. Many imperial troops were called in and, as in the Capeafew years previously, African labour was necessary to service the military effort. A spurt of railway building further increased demand. Workers could not be raised within SWA: the Ovambo had hardly begun to migrate and the government could not risk using force to persuade them; the Herero were the object of a war of genocide; and those of the Name. groups which were not fighting were locked into labour on the farms. At the very moment that the German Government began to cast further afield, a pool of unemployed workers with experience in military support work, dock labour, railway construction and transporting was building up in Cape Town, the nearest major port. Recruitment was soon set in motion and the first shiploads of a few hundred workers left in June 1904 for employment as ox-drivers and transporters in the German military forces. (12) In 1905, the Koppel company, which had contracted to build a railway to Otavi, began recruiting in the Eastern Cape, but Cape Town remained the most important collection point both for the military and for the railways in the next few years. By early 1906 the Assistant Resident Magistrate of the Uitvlugt location reported that "thousands" of workers had been recruited from his division in the previous nine months. (13) Migrants to SWA were primarily lured by the wages. In their haste to mobilize military support workers, the German authorities, or-atleast the recruiters working for them, offered £5 a month (about 3/6 a day) with free transport, rations and clothes. (14) Railway workers were promised similar amounts. Though not as high as the daily rate of 4/6 paid in Cape Town in 1901, such wages were far preferable to the going rate of £3 a month on the mines. Moreover, the employers in SWA did not initially use a ticket system. Yet those workers who arrived in 1904 and 1905 found their position was not without its drawbacks. The contracts may have seemed generous, but they were not always adhered to. Deductions were made for clothing, tobacco, even travel - a passage from Cape Town to Swakopmund cost over £3 - which the workers believed would be free. "I only thought that I had spent £4:15:01', claimed one of the first batch of recruits when he returned in 1905, "I am sure that I did not buy goods to the value of 820:O:O." (15) Workers were paid in Imperial German currency which they had to exchange for sterling, and pay commission, when they returned to Cape Town.